


Sweet Mistake

by wingedthing



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, Femslash February
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 02:20:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingedthing/pseuds/wingedthing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Femslash February! Ginny, frustrated with Harry's "post-Boy-Who-Lived ennui," pays a visit to Luna for some venting and advice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet Mistake

"Sexuality is fluid," Luna said as the air between their mouths vanished.

She was answering Ginny's protests that she was straight, that the way her heart was pounding had nothing to do with any actual attraction, that she couldn't do _this_ , what they were doing right now. The answer had interrupted a further protest, the words, "And what about Harry?" but as Luna's lips softened against hers, allowing Ginny to deepen the kiss without realizing she was doing so, the silenced protest eroded into meaninglessness.

After all, Harry was the reason Ginny had come to Luna's house in the first place. As heroes so often do, he was undergoing an existential crisis, one with which Ginny had finally lost patience. She'd exploded at him that morning, "Stop acting as if you're the only one who's lost anything!" when his most recent bout of post-Boy-Who-Lived ennui had gotten too much for her to bear; she'd bit her tongue to keep from launching into the tirade that burned the back of her throat, about sometimes waking up and hardly knowing her own mind, about blood quills and the Cruciatus curse, about Fred's chalk white body lying in a shroud of dust. What good would the words do when she'd screamed them so many times, to him and to herself?

And so she left, slamming the door behind her and Apparating away before Harry could come after her and grab her arm like he always did. She didn't want to talk this out right now. She didn't want to hear more apologies and about how hard it was. She wanted someone to tell her that she was right and help her think about something else.

That was where Luna came in.

Even two years out of school, Luna still lived with her father in the house shaped like a rook, for both of their convenience. Dirigible plums still bobbed outside the front door (though Ginny had to wonder if they were even in season), which Ginny found unlocked and swinging open in the light breeze. "It's open!" Luna called down the stairs unnecessarily when she heard Ginny's footsteps inside. "I'm just feeding the augurey and then I'll be right down!"

"Don't bother, it's just me," Ginny answered, mincing her way through the messy downstairs and up the winding staircase to Luna's bedroom where her friend stood by the window, offering several dead rats to an enormous and doleful bird that had built its nest by the sill. Ginny plopped down on Luna's bed cross-legged to wait for the augurey's lunch to be done, and when it was, Luna turned around and cringed.

"Harry's at it again, isn't he?" she asked.

Ginny laughed, more surprised than anything. "Is it that obvious?" she said as Luna crossed the room to join her on the bed, sitting close enough that their knees touched.

"Whenever Harry is going through one of his phases," Luna explained in far kinder words than Ginny would have used, "you get a little crease right here that doesn't go away." She touched the center of Ginny's forehead, between her eyes, with the tip of an index finger. "Even when you smile, it's still there. What happened this time?"

The next several hours were cleansing, an unpacking of every last one of Ginny's feelings that she'd swallowed since Harry had become everyone's hero again, which was wonderful for all of them but apparently terrible for him. He struggled, he always told her, with even seeing a future at all, and Ginny had come to wonder: if he couldn't see a future at all, how could he see a future with her in it? What was the point in any of it? Was she just there to keep his bed warm at night and pose on his arm, the prize at the end of the story, the trophy he'd earned for fulfilling his destiny?

By the time she'd finished, her eyes and cheeks were red, and Luna had incinerated several piles of tissues, enough that their ash had formed a small hill on the floorboards. After the last pile, Luna had laid her head down on Ginny's shoulder, the way they'd done several times late nights at Hogwarts and in cool summer evenings, and linked her arms around Ginny's waist. "Maybe he and I just-- need to not be together right now," Ginny muttered in a choked voice, finally giving sound to something she'd feared saying for months.

Luna was at her most appreciable when she answered. "I think you're right," she said, "and I don't think either of you are weak or loving each other any less if you do take time apart, no matter how long it is. You've been an entire person for a very long time now, but Harry hasn't had a chance to be that, and you don't need to wait for him to become that."

"I hadn't thought of it that way," Ginny admitted, words that she found herself using far more often with Luna than with anyone else. A reluctant smirk came to her face, and she nudged Luna in the side. "Thanks for making me see that, though."

She didn't see Luna smile; she heard it in her voice. "It's what I do, " Luna said, and Ginny turned her head to try and smile at her. In the same moment, Luna lifted her head from Ginny's shoulder, and Ginny suddenly found her lips less than a sigh away from Luna's. Her heart jerked unexpectedly, but she didn't move, even though her pulse raced so hard and fast that she swore Luna could see it through her skin.

Her mouth was suddenly dry, and she had to swallow before saying, "I never thought of you this way."

Luna didn't need clarification. "I know," she said.

She was so close, too close. Her skin was flecked with freckles that Ginny had never seen before, freckles and cool undertones that reflected Ginny's warmth. Ginny swallowed again, and her voice cracked when she spoke. "I never thought of any girl this way."

That was when Luna said it, a simple sentence that acted as permission and blessing: "Sexuality is fluid."

Ginny would wonder, later, if her mind had been playing tricks on her or if the bed really had been that soft beneath them. She would marvel at the memory of how her hands, calloused from Quidditch and broad and square, caught against Luna's narrower hands and long, thin fingers flexing and extending from smooth palms and thin wrists. She would wonder if the taste really had been so tart and sweet because of, as Luna claimed, the dirigible plums or if it was something else, something that perhaps existed only in her imagination.

But, truth be told, none of it mattered in that moment.

What mattered were the exquisite sigh and arching back, the afternoon sun turning them both to gold, the glowing heaviness of their tangled arms and legs, the sweet softness of the kiss that Luna pressed against Ginny's cheekbone when all was said and done. The reckless afternoon had solved nothing, and perhaps it was a mistake, but only the sweetness of the mistake mattered.


End file.
